Size Matters: Louie, Louie

I guess nobody has a problem with you call this woman "fat". Anyhoo. I hate how every depiction of fat, black women having sex involves us having jacked up hair! WTF?

there was a scene similar to this on Six Feet Under during its second season. I think the fat black woman was supposed to represent "life" and Monk's first shrink was supposed to represent "death". Well she climbed on top of him and they were going at it (complete with animal noises, they weren't even trying to be subtle) while Nate Fisher looked on with initial curiosity, then - you know - horror.

Excellent post, Tashie.

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Thanks for this post. I haven't seen this episode yet, though I've been watching (and enjoying and digging into some of the problematic parts of) the rest of the series eagerly. One of the things I like about him as a comedian is that he checks himself on occasion--for using the word "faggot", for example--and shows some of the awkward and challenging parts of wrestling with privilege. He often ends up bearing the brunt of the joke, or at least showing some awareness of "isms". ("So 10,000 years of unchecked white male privilege isn't enough for you?") Doesn't sound like he's even close to interrogating anything here, though. (Come to think of it, to a lesser degree, the fat poor white woman he hooked up with earlier in the season was not really a complicated or interesting portrayal, either. I hope this isn't going to be a pattern on the show.)

I just saw this episode last night and . . . ho boy.

So Wikipedia informs me that the (unnamed?) fat black woman Louie has sex with at the end of the episode is supposed to be Tarese's sister, the cashier whom Louie stalks earlier in the episode. I was not clear on this when I watched it, but the two women are paired by living in the same apartment complex. Tarese states that he'll never get to have sex with her (after telling him to suck a dick, which I found unfortunate), closes the door behind her, and then the fat black woman appears and gives him a horny smile . . . We know what follows.

This configuration puts the two women in sharper contrast with one another. Though Tarese has an average job, she's conventionally pretty, is of "average" build, and is sexualized in Louie's imagination (close-up shots aplenty on her lips while he's in the check-out line, culminating with her smiling and removing the vest from her uniform).

As you say, the fat black woman Louie settles for at the end is represented quite differently. That she's both a) on top of him and b) eliciting visible terror we can read on Louie's face further exacerbates the "comedy" they're trying to mine out of this tired, regressive scene, made all the sadder by the reality that we'll probably never see either character again and thus never give them any nuance. As it stands now, all I got from the episode was "geez, the orgasm of the fat black woman is scary . . . let's render it powerless by exaggerating it so we can laugh at her pleasure." :(

This entire storyline was really unfortunate and could have played much differently. What a missed opportunity.